attach and assemble
by edeabeth
Summary: "You can't love anyone. Not without ruining them." They are ruined and yet the become whole again.


**Attach and Assemble**

**.**

I'm just writing in alternating segments that are kind of ensnared in the idea of this modern AU. Toph and Sokka are my favourite characters, so I just couldn't resist. I did have an Aang story that was in the works, but I'm just kind of delayed in my ideas right now. Soon, though. I will pick it up. (promise)

**.**

This was meant to be some sort of character study, but it really evolved much past that.

.

Now, I've never had eye surgery, never studied it or preformed any form of research. Honest. Toph's eye surgery allowed her to see again, but had complications. Sokka's family is screwed up, to the finest degree.

**.**

_Enjoy_

**.**

**.**

**Can't**

**.**

"_You can't love anyone. Not without ruining them."_

**.**

**Detached**

**.**

She doesn't quite get used to it.

Her face in the mirror, sharp and pale. The way the mirror steams from the shower, and the old flooring beneath her feet. The way her hands are, small and frail. The way she can see an entire world that's nothing but a _stranger_.

Her apartment is cold; objects scattered. Cheap.

She has to divide her reality now to the reality before. It's hard to focus, reading scattered texts that don't make any sense because the words are so foreign. She doesn't have to try and drag her finger over braille. Braille was loose in her mind before. Detached from her understanding. Her Father stopped her lessons when she was younger, deciding she was fine the way she was.

Detached.

She slips on a camisole before drying her hair with a towel. Closes her eyes.

The way she can see herself in the mirror makes her panic.

She can see.

**.**

**Adjustment**

**.**

Sokka left his apartment, slamming the door shut behind him. He's busy shoving his hair back in an elastic with one hand as he fumbles for his blaring cellphone.

"Hello." He calls flatly, punching the button to the elevator open. "What do you want?"

His sister's voice is warm but hesitant. "You haven't talked to me in over a month."

He frowns, lightly pressing the buttons to the ground floor. Already he regrets the choice not to take the stairs when the walls seem to close in. "You know how to dial a phone." He counts to ten. One floor turns into two away from exit. He forces himself to adjust.

"So do you." He can hear the heat in her words, before the livid exhale. "You should come home. Please, Sokka. Dad would want you to." The doors ding, and he can only hear his salvation. Doors opening with a loud clank, and he escapes frantically.

"Dad's dead. What he wants, what he doesn't want. What does it matter?" He grunts, nodding to the desk boy who's bent over a mug of black coffee and a tablet that's blinking violently. "I have work, Katara. Hurry up."

He's going to be late.

Again.

Katara sighed loudly. "I know things haven't been the greatest. I know. You should be here, Sokka. Dad's dead, and you won't even show up for his Funeral."

He forced himself to breath. "Haven't been the _greatest_? I know you better than that. You aren't stupid. I'm not going anywhere near any of those traitors."

"Dad ne-"

"He never came back for us."

He ends the call and sets off.

**.**

**Empty**

**.**

She wanders through the crowded streets, cigarette dangling from her fingertips. She exhales and before inhaling angrily, trying to forget. Trying to become empty.

The last two hours of therapy fill her mind, and she cringes.

Toph's boney shoulder collides painfully with someone else's, and she's on the ground before she can understand what happened. "Sorry," Someone speaks gruffly above her, and extends a large hand down towards her. She blinks, trying to focus in on the dark hand before accepting it.

"Thanks," she looks up at him. Slate blue eyes stare directly into her own, and he nods.

He grunts. His eyes pin themselves to the mark on her bare shoulder, and Toph bristles. "Alright?"

"Fine."

People begin to brush up against them, the swell of the crowds pushing them aside.

She gives him a blank stare. Looks down at the ground and finds what looks to be two rolls of coins. She bends, picking them up. Admires the brown cardboard rolls in her hands, with silver dimes glinting at the ends. "These yours?" She offers them slowly.

He takes them carefully. "Thanks. Tips. Work at the place on the corner of Ong. You ever see it?"

She tries not to smirk.

**.**

**Accept**

**.**

Sokka's used to working nights. He doesn't end until long after midnight, along with some guy in the back that checks the cash every half hour and bakes cookies and biscuits for the display.

He's usually alone sometime after eleven except for the old gentleman that comes in with a newspaper and nurses a coffee in the back corner alone. So when the doorbell rings, he looks up from the counter and meets that bored expression of some girl.

He blinks.

He thinks he recognizes this girl.

Pale hands and silky hair. Sharp eyes that somehow seem faded.

"You, again?" She drawls slowly, bracing her hands on the counter. Blinking, she studies him. The mark on her shoulder had darkened into something resembling a bruise. He inwardly flinched.

He swallows. "You." Sokka affirms. "Coffee, or do you want anything?"

She looked down away, eyes narrowing. "Tea. Lady Earl, if you have any?"

He snatches a mug from below the rack and rummages in neglected boxes for the right tea bag. "You live around here?" He calls over his shoulder as she waits. Slowly filling the mug with hot water, he taps his foot.

"Up by Agni. One of them Zuko buildings."

He passes her the tea slowly, carefully placing it so the handle is to her. "Same."

She accepts it with one hand, other one digging deep in her pockets for change. "How much do I owe you?"

"Forget about it." When she tries to push money into his hand, he shakes his head. "On the house. What floor you on?"

"Third." She accepts his offering.

He asks if she wants to hang around for another half hour, he'd walk her home.

She does.

Turns out they appear to be neighbours.

**.**

**Dauntless**

**.**

She can't sleep.

All she can feel is the drumming of her heart, the rage of nightmares and memories that can't shut up and the feel of never ending anxiety.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she pretends she can't see.

Before the surgery. Before the way things were ended.

Back when she could be ignorant.

Her crammed little apartment feels so big around her. All she can think about is being trapped. Trapped in rooms she can't find her way out of, doors that are locked in ways that she can't unlock. She closes her eyes shut. Tries to breath.

Can't.

The feel of smooth wood floors beneath her bare feet, windows sealed shut. Trapping heat in. Voices hushed, her name resurfacing again and again from beyond sealed doors.

Delicate, fragile. Everything she's resented. Surgery gave her a way out of her existence, but left her full of regrets that kept toppling over and drowning her.

She wants to be dauntless. Dauntless is to be free.

So she forces herself to sit up. Open her eyes. Find her pack of cigarettes, and stick one unlit in her mouth. Counts down from a hundred. "Grow the fuck up," she mumbles to herself. The phone rings shrilly, and she snags it. Screens her call to find ensure it isn't any more lawyers, doctors or her parents.

It's an unknown string of numbers.

She almost hopes it's a telemarketer to abuse verbally. Instead, she gets someone's dry voice flooding her room quietly.

"Sorry, I know it's late."

She sighs. "Don't be. Wasn't getting much sleep."

Sokka offers quietly. "Wanna go walk around?"

"You do know it's five in the morning, right?" She eyes her room for her beat up flip-flops. In the corner far from the door, her walking stick has become discarded and unused in the corner, collecting dust.

"I know."

"Good."

**.**

**Dance**

**.**

They walk through the lobby together.

Toph combs her tangled hair with her fingers loosely, and closes her eyes. Dark circles rim her eyes, and mirror his own. Insomnia is a bitch, he muses as he pushes the door open for her.

"You got a job anywhere?" He asks, watching the cab speed past the two.

"Down in a teashop. Called Jasmine Dragon. Crazy old man runs the place, but he tells some pretty good stories." She chuckles, tilting her head back. "Crazy old man."

He smirks. "The best type."

She looks up at him, pushing hair behind her ears. "Where you from, anyways? You from around?"

He announces, throwing his hands up. "Canada. Land of blizzards and bacon."

"Sounds foreign. I doubt I've ever heard of something like that. Sounds insane." Toph teased, brushing her knuckles loosely against his shoulder. "My parents came from China. Moved to New York."

It's cool out, and she regrets her decision of ignoring the sweater hanging loosely over her chair. Nothing but an old tank top and a pair of shorts. Her flip flops are obnoxious as she walks, rubbing her arms roughly.

"You close to your parents?"

The question strikes a nerve.

Her spine straightens, and her jaw locks. "Are you?"

He swallows. The memory of a dead mother who favoured his _perfect_ sister from the very beginning, a father that was a ghost and an Uncle that favoured the belt. "Not really."

Her finger tips brush his, and then she's gone running. For a second he thinks she's dancing. "You coming?" She shouts over her shoulder, running further and further ahead.

He starts running for her.

**.**

**Rage**

**.**

"I told you to stop calling me, Katara." Sokka spoke, trying to control his anger. Livid. Raw. He grabs a can of beer from the fridge and rubs it against his forehead. "I have nothing more to say to you."

She sounds choked. "You never came."

Slamming the can against the counter, he forced himself not to send his fist through thin walls. "I told you I wasn't. You knew that. Skip the act and get over it."

"You should have. He loved you." Katara sighed. "I love you. We all wanted you to be there."

"I'd rather gouge out my own eyes out than be in the same country as him. You know that." He can still hear the sound of the belt against his back. Feel it beating down his entire existence into a pleading _nothing_.

"Sokka, you are my brother. You love me."

"Don't ever call me again." He warns her.

Ten minutes later, his door is opened. Toph stands before him, passes him a beer. The rage dims down slightly, and all he wants to do is engulf her in his hands and just hold tight. He restrains himself. Accepts the beer, and accepts the boundaries between the two.

**.**

**Revealed**

**.**

"I used to be blind." She informs him, three days after the break down.

They had been talking in his apartment when she simply just broke down. Clawing at her eyes like she just snapped. Sokka managed to pin her hands down before she did any real harm to herself, no matter how much she had screamed at him. Words that were a tangle of English and Chinese, demands and pleadings.

Toph managed to bring herself down to reality, and her disorienting words became understandable. Sokka doesn't let her go, but holds on tighter. Evaluates her.

It's been exactly one month and seven days since he walked her home. Exactly one month and seven days since she had collided into him.

"What the hell was that?" He swore, leaning down over her. "Answer me, Goddamn it!" Toph looks revealed before him. Hair like indigo falling over her face, hands pinned against the cheap counter, and her breathing violent.

Silence falls between them.

Slowly the puzzle is unraveled. Her surgery to give her what she never had. How every so _fucking_ often everything would just blur. How her sight made her feel inferior, trying to maneuver her way through a written world of words and numbers. Movements to fast were impossible to track. Bright lights and sudden flashing made her wither, and darkness made her bleed.

He asks her if she's going to be alright now.

She just stares through him, as if she was blind.

**. **

**Smooth**

**.**

The door swings open beneath his touch easily, and he's embraced by the scent of fresh tea and old spices that somehow smells like home to him. It's a narrow shop, filled with tiny tables with chairs that don't quite match. It's filled to the brim with people. A young Asian man bent over a textbook, and a group of older men seated in the back. He's never set foot in the shop before. Despite the almost nightly occurrences of her wandering into his work late at night, he'd never thought about dropping by.

Toph's serving a group of boys, and he feels floored. She looks so young, thin boned and wide eyed to the point where he really understands the eight year gap.

He wants to grab her hands, and tether himself down.

Katara fills him mind. The image of his Uncle lashing out. His mother lying dead in the house, the door he forgot to lock is swinging open. Her eyes are like doorways into refuge. An escape from all this damn suffering.

He hardly notices that the boys are gone until Toph's braced herself on the tiled counter, smirking. "You ordering, or you admiring?" Her words aren't dry like they usually were. Sarcastic or rough. Smooth, delicate.

He forces himself to stay steady.

Sokka breathes deep. Smells Chai and peppermint. Vanilla. "What do you suggest?"

The smile on her face isn't wicked. Isn't knowing. "For you?"

Sokka gives a jaunty little wave to the empty space next to him. "Haven't I introduced you to my friend here? Name's Joe."

She snorts. Behind her is a wall filled with shelves. Jars of tea. "Funny, Mr. Coffee-Addict." She's amusing to look at now, without a package of cigarettes jammed in her pockets and a scowl painted across her face. Now, wearing a dark green apron and a deadly smile plastered on her.

"I prefer being titled appropriately as Sir Caffeine Addict. Obviously. My friend Joe and I figured that this being a tea shop, it would be inappropriate to order a cup o' Joe." He drawls.

"Forgive me, Sir Caffeine Jackass. Mr. Joe, my most sincere apologise." She bows slightly at the waist. Arching a brow. "Then, for you, Mr. Joe, I would highly suggest Moroccan Mint. Black, of course."

Sokka smothers a laugh. "Black?"

"Only wusses drown it in sugar and cream."

He tries to make his heart swell a little less as she passes him a steaming mug and denies any attempt of cash.

"My cash is broken." She explains. Five minute later as he turns to leave, she's cashing a stranger out.

**.**

**Fit**

**.**

She smothers her screams. Her trembling hands knock some book Sokka demanded her to (attempt to) read onto the floor. Her lamp wobbles with great threat as Toph desperately struggles to click it on.

Suddenly she's blinded.

Light fills her room, flooding into the corners.

She forces herself to breath. Deep. Release. Grapple.

Toph's not really sure what she's doing until she's knocking staccato against Sokka's door, shuddering at the thought of being like this. Nightmares clinging at her limbs, fear slopping her spine. The sleeve of her shirt hanging down over her one shoulder, revealing pale flesh.

The door swings open, and he looks dishevelled before her.

"What happened?" Sokka demands, straightening his shoulders. She can feel the tears against her face, tears she hadn't realized existed.

Toph feels stupid.

"Never mind." She mumbles, studying his naked feet intently. His pants roll up his ankles, revealing a jagged scar that curls around the tan skin.

She feels him tugging at her wrist, offering her coffee to her scowl.

"I'm pretty sure I have tea stashed away somewhere." He smirks. "It might have slipped into my grocery list."

She thanks him, linking her fingers to fit between his. "I'm sorry about this. Just, therapy wasn't good today."

His smile isn't bright. It isn't mocking. It's real.

"Say no more."

**.**

**Merry**

**.**

He doesn't really know what to get her. She doesn't like jewelry or perfume. He also isn't really sure what to get a girl who's just a friend, not a girlfriend for a present.

He eventually finds two things.

She doesn't read often, but when she does, she reads history.

He gets a collection of books that focus of rocks and Natural History, and a rock. He spent hours in the shop trying to find the proper crystal rock to give her before settling on something that wasn't crystal.

It was smooth dark stone, fitting in the palm of his hand perfectly.

It's strange, but she loves them both. She puts the rock on her nightstand, and spends two days reading the books and explaining every details and for that he can't help but smile.

She found him a boomerang, something completely odd and foreign, but he puts it on his wall and loves it all the same.

(It feels right in his hand, as if he is a warrior. Not a coward weak or foolish.)

**.**

**Hurt**

**.**

"_Come home for Christmas. Please?" _

Delete.

"_Sokka, it's been three months."_

Ignore.

"_Why won't you answer me?" _

Skip.

"_Aang left me." _

Smirk.

"_I love you." _

Delete. Delete. Delete.

"_I'm coming to see you."_

Scream.

**.**

**Appearance**

**.**

Toph didn't quite know what to think of this woman.

Her hair was strung up and braided in some strange style, and wore loose blue colours. "I'm Katara," she greets warmly, sticking her hand out a just bit too fast for Toph's eyes to catch. She flinches back, a hand just _there_ in front of her.

She accepts it though, fitting her cold hand in the warmer one before releasing like she was bit by a viper.

She knew bits and pieces of his life.

One night he yanked his shirt off when they finally reached the apartment from the pouring rain. His back formed monument, testimony and mosaic of pain. Toph doesn't know everything. She doesn't need to know the history beneath every scar. She understands the history.

Sokka's pacing like a caged wolf in the kitchen. She can see the frustration rolling off him in waves. "I'm sorry," she speaks coolly. Loosely. "I don't believe I know you. Are you a cousin?"

Katara looks hurt.

Toph doesn't bother to feel the hurt. "Or just an old acquaintance?"

Suddenly the girl becomes seven feet tall, on a direct warpath. "How could you, Sokka? You shut me out, but you don't even tell this girlfriend of yours about me? Do you really feel so bitter?"

Sokka doesn't even deny the statement of an assumed relationship.

"Don't you even look at me, you bitch." He seethes low, hurling an empty glass at her.

It shatters brilliantly on the wall, just inches away from Katara's tanned face. Toph shuts her eyes. When she hears the next three glasses break against the wall, she steps back. She can't track the way they move. All she can see is the livid grip, and the way it just appears into a million pieces.

"You never came for the funeral!" She screeched, stamping her foot.

He leaned back against the counter. "He died a long time ago, Katara. Just a fucking ghost, refusing to do a thing about us." Slumped. Exhausted. "Just let things die."

"He loved us," She tried to grab his hand. He shoved her violently away.

He sighed. Exhaling resentful air. "He loved you. Now get out of my home, and leave me alone."

When she passes by, she tries to take Toph's hands. "Please make him see, please."

Toph scowls. "He's not the blind one here."

Sokka never mentions Katara again.

**.**

**Fade**

**.**

_Toph is locked within the linen closet again. She is crammed beneath the low shelf, listening to wicked heels crack against the wooden floor with each violent step. _

_Chinese words sinks through the doors, and she can hear her father's rough speech. _

_She is broken in a way she does not understand. She is less than they are, inferior and they know it. They wrap her in blankets and protection, sealing her away in rooms with wooden floors and locks on the doors. She has a ripple of scars over her back from her father's belt from when she was a child, and flinches at their touch. _

_She has wanderlust, her grandmother claimed. Road maps engraved into her lungs, city names tattooed to her rib cage. _

_All she wants though, is to see heavy skies that settle low over the horizon. To see more than just raw voices and images cast through her fingertips. _

_She wants to see, because it sounds so beautiful. It feels so beautiful. So unattainable. _

_They say she's pretty. When they lace her tight into a dress that snares her lungs. Paint her face heavy like a mask, trying to reel in some man with money to make up for this burden. She wants out, but she knows this is her punishment. The walls close in, smothering her slowly. Deadly, she's locked away. Out of place, out of mind. Like she has already begun to fade away from reality. _

_It is hours before a servant flings the door open, shoving her down the halls. She is numb from this rebirth, and flung into a world of noise and existences, and she can't understand where she is anymore. _

_She is faded, and somehow she never left that closet. _

**.**

**Renewal**

**.**

_I don't want this_

_I can't he-_

_Please dad don't let him hurt me please dad don't let him hurt me please dad don'-_

_It wasn't my fault_

He should have locked the door.

_Please, Uncle. Enough, please. _

_I'll be good, I swear. _

_I'll try harder, I'm begging you!_

The door swung open, beckoning him deeper into the eerie house.

_Oh my god_

_Don't hit me!_

_I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMO-_

Someone's crying.

_Leave me alone. _

_I don't need you. Not anymore. _

_Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. StopStopStopSTOP!_

He did this. Dead body on the ground, girl screaming for her to wake up.

"_I'm coming over."_

"_Got plans for tonight?"_

"_Good." _

Someone is casting a gentle shadow over his history now, with eyes that read right through him. He feels renewed, as he opens the door and lets her in.

"_You can't love anyone. Not without ruining them." _Katara's words as a grieving child hit him hard.

**.**

**Raw**

**.**

He doesn't look Toph in the eye anymore. Suddenly, some girl with a special ringtone fills the space between Toph and him.

Her name is _Suki_.

It feels raw. Purposely done. Still hurts, all the same.

He's gone, and she's here. Somewhere in between is someone else.

She chokes back a sob.

**.**

**Somewhere**

**.**

Somewhere along the lines, he was growing harder. Suki was a girl with big eyes and loud words, and seemed to fit almost too perfectly against his side.

Toph shuts her door tight, and Sokka feels himself shutting away tighter.

"_You can't love anyone. Not without ruining them."_

He'd damn himself first before ruining her.

**.**

**Dare**

**.**

Toph wanders through the streets.

Trying to breath. Deep. In. out. Inhale. Exhale. Shove her hands inside her pockets deep. Sokka falling into step beside her.

Suki is pretty, Toph supposes.

She looks nice in her heavy sweaters and polished boots, with her face powdered in ways Toph could never pull off. Hair knotted, lips red. She looks like a woman that could appeal to Sokka, and she does. Easily.

Suki is a waitress at the coffee shop that Sokka suffers at. Walks around in stilettoes. Asks Toph how she is every time she ventures in for a cup of tea.

She's not _blind_.

The way Sokka smiles at Suki, grabs at her apron strings. The way suddenly he takes out his phone and just _has_ to return a text _immediately_ to _her_. Suddenly Friday Sokka and Suki are getting coffee, and returning to Sokka's apartment like crooks in the night. She can hear his low words brushing against Suki's ears, and can feel the way Suki touches his shoulder. His right shoulder with the awful scar that loops over and onto his chest like someone used a knife to carve in a monument of his history.

She spends her nights vomiting and wandering downtown, and begins to pick fights. Extra hours at the Jasmine Dragon, and pushing a bright smile on when Sokka mumbles a sorry about skipping out on her last night.

(Was busy, he attempts.)

(Busy is defined as wasting hours in a pizza parlour where he _hates_, with Suki.)

Toph just smiles, nods and tries not to wither. Waits for the moment she can seal herself into the tomb of her apartment and try to keep herself from breaking apart. She doesn't understand why he is bothering to walk her back. Why he bothered to wait for her shift to end.

Sokka almost dares her to say something. Ignores a text, forgets about calling her back. "Suki wanted to hang out."

"That's cool." She shrugs, slipping cheap ear buds in and blasting a song that she knows he despises. He can hear it, she knows. He cringes.

Her days are an aggravating mash up of avoiding and therapy and long hours and trying so fucking hard not to die.

Her vision blurs.

Suddenly, she's kneeling on the ground. Her heart is screaming, her lungs dying.

She can't see.

**.**

**Rejection**

**.**

Suki delivers a text to her while he waits in a cramped waiting room. Says that she really is sorry, but she's not really into this _thing_.

Sokka tries not to think about how he isn't into her.

What he is into is a girl who's under and down, having her eyes cut open. Eye surgery's a bitch, Toph told him a while ago. Too many complications can and will happen, and they will remain defiant.

His large hands almost squish his coffee cup into submission, and he grinds his teeth in frustration. His phone is a graveyard of words he ignored. He replays each message, driving the plastic deeper and deeper into his skull.

"_Hey, Sokka. Guess you're out again? Call me when you get back. Or have a chance." _

"_You told me to talk to you if it happened again. Sokka, I went blind today. Not that it matters, but-Fuck it." _

"_Don't bother about meeting me tonight. It's fine." _

"_No. Things are fine."_

"_Call me if you aren't busy." _

He never bothered to listen to the messages before. Listening to her wanting to be with him was too painful.

He wants her.

**.**

**Heal**

**.**

The Doctor's son drives her home.

Duke draped a thick jacket around her shoulders, escorted her past dazed Sokka with an expert grace, and managed to manoeuvre unseeing Toph into the front seat. They claim her sight will return, and yet blind her with bandages.

"So, who was he?" He's clearly uncomfortable next to her.

She turns her head towards his voice, and settles back into the warm seat, coughing lowly into her arm. "Who?"

He sighs. "The guy waiting for you."

"Someone who I'd rather not see." Her lips quirk into a smile, and he begins to laugh slightly.

"Fair enough, I suppose. I don't think I caught your name." He pauses, before speaking again. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Toph. Do you mind if I smoke?"

She's not healing. She's just avoiding everything.

She's coping, however.

She smokes long and hard, and tries to fill her lungs with enough smoke so she can float away.

**.**

**Resist**

**.**

Sokka discovers an hour after Toph had departed from the hospital, that some boy took her home.

It takes him two weeks to come into contact with her. Two weeks of her ignoring every phone call, every knock on the fucking door. It had been two weeks of her slipping out of the apartment with the aid of some guy named 'Duke' for her appointments before he finally collided with her.

She was using her walking stick, exiting the elevator and moving with a forced, clip stride when he flung himself out the door late for work.

She's on the ground, and he feels de ja vu. "Watch where you're going." She snaps, looking a degree to his right, bandages thick around her skull.

"Alright?" She cringes at his voice. His is dry, thick.

"Fine."

She tries to slip past him, her cane striking him in the shin painfully. "Damn it, Toph. We need to talk."

"That's grand." He wrestles her into his arms and tries to pull her backwards, ignoring her struggles and protests. Toph tries to bite him, tries to punch him.

He almost trips over his own feet trying to force her into his apartment. Sokka sighed, fingers forcing the lock tight.

He tries to help her to a chair, but Toph pushed bitterly away from him and managed to brace herself against the tiny little table that wobbled.

"How was the surgery?" He asks, unsure of where to stand. He settles for a stance near the door, ready to catch her if she went for it.

She spat. "Amazing. Now, when have you taken up the hobby of forcing girls into your room?"

She's resisting. Resisting his cheap explanations. "I need to read something to you. Will you listen?"

"Do I have to?"

He began rummaging through papers on the coffee table desperately. An empty can of beer falls into a tube of Suki's lipstick, falling off and onto the floor. Papers are flung to the side until he drags out the one he wanted. "Just, hold still for a second."

"What is it?"

He paused, looking at her. Arms crossed defensively. His words heaped in small print were scrawled delicately across the paper. "_Because I could not stop for death/He kindly stopped for me."_

She stares at him. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Dickinson."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm the reason why my mom is dead. She was home by herself with Katara, and I was out with some friends. I never locked that door, and someone walked in with a gun. Shot her dead, and ran away. My Uncle blamed me, and he would beat me for it. I've been trying to fix everything I did wrong, but I couldn't ever go back and fix it. So I figured not loving anyone would keep them safe. Keep me from ruining them."

She doesn't understand. She's hurt and aggravated, and she's so blind that it hurts.

It's a hideous attempt at trying to apologise, and they both know it.

She's stuck on a loop, feeling every fear the way she always had.

"Katara told me that I would ruin everyone I loved, and I don't want to ruin you."

She sinks to her knees, and he knows he isn't forgiven-but they are mending the way they always do. Cigarettes and beer, and trying to pretend the hurt isn't there.

**.**

**Skittish**

**.**

It's an art, to lure her near.

She doesn't really sleep lately. She can't work with the bandages blinding her, and she can't wander the city like she had before.

She is skittish around him. Everyone, to be honest. To be more honest, him the most.

He hurt her, drove scars into her the way he never should have.

He shows up at one in the morning with Chinese, and he grabs a package of cigarettes when he notices her carton is nearly empty. He reads books to her, and coaxes her to venture out around the city. On bad days he sits outside her door until she opens up hours later.

He brings her tea, and they spend long hours together until she doesn't flinch when he touches her, she doesn't avoid his phone calls.

It takes eight days for her to answer his phone calls, and it takes even longer for her to even call him herself.

He doesn't regret a single second.

**.**

**Taunt**

**.**

He waits for her out in the waiting room, his eyes glued to the exit.

She isn't going to slip by like before.

She does return, wearing sunglasses that hide her eyes.

She walks to him herself, jabbing him in the chest. "Told you I would see you later."

They go out for pizza and beer, and spend hours trying to see everything they can. They are giddy and loud, but they can't hide the fear that they felt. The anxiety taunt and stretched between them.

It's midnight when he kisses her, and she doesn't let him stop.

**.**

**Return**

**.**

Katara returns to the city, all blue eyes and sweet smiles. She's gotten a job working at some flower shop, and spends much of her time following Sokka.

He can handle it, he knows.

He just can't handle it when she begins to follow Toph around.

Toph's eyesight is far better now. She is recovering, using sunglasses to shield her eyes from the brightness of everything, and he always keeps his curtains closed to dim the lights in his apartment. She doesn't suffer from blurriness as much, but it is still there. It is unforgettable, the way she has lost everything.

He's protective of her. He walks her home from work, he tells Duke to shove off when he begins to harass her for a date.

Katara finds her phone number some home, and calls without pattern. She arrives in the evenings, trying to gain foothold into their lives.

Toph is hard, bristling at these attempts. She scowls and bites her tongue, but she won't break.

He can feel her hatred for this woman that Toph doesn't even know, and that's what makes him want to push her into his apartment and lock the doors, having his way with her for hours. She cares enough to make Katara into a fucking battle, and he can't help but love her for that.

"How the fuck did she get my number?" She asked randomly, one evening. They're in some café drinking tea and coffee, and he is trying not to spray coffee across the table.

"She has your number?"

She hands him her phone, and he can see the logs. Five different phone calls from Katara, all declined. Eleven different text messages, all unanswered.

That's why it's three in the morning, and he and Katara are screaming at each other on the streets.

**.**

**Escape**

**.**

She knows his birthday. He doesn't know how she knows his birthday, but she knows his birthday.

She asks him several days before what he wants, and he tells her.

"I want your history."

She is a ghost, real in the present but vapour in the past. She grew up in China and came to America, and her family is torn apart.

He knows nothing more.

She gives him a long look before nodding.

On his birthday, she gives him two things.

A sword and a newspaper clipping.

He's seen this clipping before, and has heard it over the news. He never read it, nor listened. He remembers his ex-roommate mentioning it, studying for his journalism class.

It's only two years old, but the face in the picture is the same. Pale and smooth, no emotion displayed. Her eyes are pale, and she does not see the lens that captures her on film. The clipping goes into detail about the case of abuse and neglect, the girl trapped in her family's home. Locked in a closet and escaping, wandering down highways. Rescued by herself, and she'll be preparing for surgery shortly.

It's her history sewn together, and it makes him crumble.

She's watching him dangerously, and he can feel her unease.

"You escaped," he tells her.

"Not really." She allows, words fractured and bleeding, and he can feel the short distance of them to the closet.

**.**

**Promise**

**.**

They move in together.

It's a near disaster.

An apartment in the same building had opened up, and they swooped for it. It's small and cheap, but they don't really care at this point. Its three floors higher than the floor they currently live on, and it'll be home.

They practically live together already, but it's hard to cram their lives into one small place.

Sokka's always been good at packing, and Toph's always been good at leaving.

He helps her pack, and together they get rid of things. An old family photo of his that he had hidden behind his bookshelf, and her walking stick. It's an agony, sorting through their lives and discarding them so bluntly, and it leaves them near wrecks.

Finally they move in together, in a chaotic mess that no one really understands but themselves.

His books go on the bookshelf, and she puts her rock collection on the window ledges. She keeps her lamp, and he puts the coffee maker on the counter next to the kettle. They have a stash of tea and coffee, and somewhere in the mix is actual food.

At first they are tripping over socks and books, but they sort out the mess and slip into this home.

The windows don't open, and the hot water stops being hot after five minutes. Floorboards whine and the bathroom door doesn't shut properly.

It's home, though.

"Promise me you love me?" _Promise me you love me for me?_

He smiles. "I promise. Promise me you won't leave?" _Promise me you won't die?_

"I promise."

**.**

**Loud**

**.**

Therapy is difficult.

A stranger goes in every two weeks to pick at Toph's life. She can't escape it. Court orders to deal with the chaotic history that clings to her shadows. She sits like stone and forces her heart to become marble, but it hurts and burns, making her feel a rage that can't be calmed.

The therapist is brunette and sweet, and acts as if she understands exactly what she feels. On the first day of being assigned together, she had instructed Toph to call her Ty-Lee.

She asks about her mother. Her father. Her blindness and recovery.

Her closet.

She wants to dissect her life, and Toph hates it.

Because of this, Sokka simply hates it.

He is enraged by this woman. She'll leave phone calls, and Toph can't escape them. She ticks off dates on the calendar, and she is reaching the slow end of therapy sessions.

He draws a smiley on the eleventh of August, and they're two months away.

**.**

**Fight**

**.**

They return home to find Katara slumped against their door.

"_You can't love anyone. Not without ruining them."_

His mouth grows dry.

He grabs Toph's wrist, pulling her close. He's tired and worn, and Katara looks grey. "Uncle died."

"Why're you here?"

"Thought you might want to know."

She stands up and allows Toph to unlock the apartment and she follows them as they enter their home. Sokka hangs up his jacket and takes Toph's from her. His hands are shaking and Toph notices. She grabs his wrist for a second before releasing.

Katara looks strange, within his home.

She's looking at the rock collection quietly, barely restraining her hands from wandering.

Toph had collected them when she was blind, seeking out strange shapes and textures. The collection, despite the surgery, had continued to grow. They sprawled over the window ledges, and on the bookshelf in front of books.

"Do you want coffee?" She offers Sokka quietly.

He nods.

She spares Katara a glance and she nodded her head.

"Our Uncle," Katara faltered. "Was a bad person."

"I know." His hands are clenched around the table, and he desperately wants to leave. He needs to escape and clear his mind. Run through the city and into a new life far away. He can't seem to escape his history, trapped by scars that are chains.

"So was our dad."

Toph hands him a mug before doing the same for Katara. He wants to laugh at how she takes great measure as to ensure her hands do not touch Katara's.

He doesn't, because he's terrified.

He can hear the low hum of the kettle, and soon she is slowly pouring out hot water into a tea cup, and all he can smell is a blend of lavender and lemon. It's the same blend she drinks every night, and it's reassuring.

"Why are you here?" He is blunt, loud and so goddamn angry.

She gives him a look that is broken. "I've been wrong."

He simply cannot fight anymore. It's breaking him apart, and he's sick of shoving away the world. He's tired and cold, trying to find a way beyond all this.

Toph takes his hand, and he doesn't feel so angry.

**.**

**Imagine**

**.**

She eventually goes to school to study history. He waits a year before considering going on to college to study baking, and it takes another year for him to fill out an application.

They eventually leave the apartment with the windows that don't open and the bathroom door that doesn't shut. They find a house and make it a new home. He paints the walls in every colour, and she plants flowers in the gardens. Somewhere down the line they buy a dog, and soon he's resigning his job at the coffee shop to work full time in some bakery, and she's got a job arranged with the Natural History Museum.

Suki doesn't exist, nor does Duke. Katara is somewhere between Canada and America, lost in the winds wanderlust.

They don't matter though, because they simply don't.

They are together, and that is what matters.

She is alive and warm, and everything he always wanted. He is unrestrained and liberated, and everything she always needed.

They imagine happy endings that last for eternity.


End file.
